Twins born record-breaking 87 days apart

Amy and Katie were newborns when they broke a world record. The chubby-cheeked babies were born a remarkable 87 days apart in Ireland.

Their mom, Maria Jones Elliott, birthed Amy four months early, but Katie wasn’t ready to come out and arrived three months later.

Their extraordinary birth that unfolded at Dublin’s Waterford Regional Hospital will make it into the Guinness Book of World Records for “the longest interval between the birth of twins.” The previous record is 84 days, according to the British Mirror.

Who even knew this was possible?

“Most people haven’t heard of this,” Dr. Eddie O’Donnell who helped deliver the twins told the Belfast Telegraph. “You can end up losing a twin, it could be stillborn.”

But Amy beat the odds. When doctors delivered her at 23 weeks, she was only a little over a pound, according to the Irish Times. She toughed it out in intensive care for three months until her sister arrived.

“For a baby delivered at 23 weeks to survive is a huge achievement from everyone’s point of view. For a 23-week twin to survive is even bigger because twins often behave more prematurely than singleton babies. That really is right at the absolute border of viability,” Dr. Coulter Smith told the Irish Times.

It’s not entirely uncommon for twin births to be separated by a few days, even weeks, but anything over two months is extremely rare.

While Maria and her husband, Chris, are overjoyed that both girls are now healthy, Maria says waiting for her second child to arrive, while worry about the first, was miserable.

“Usually you experience nothing but joy at the birth of a new baby, but it was so achingly bitter-sweet as both of their lives hung in the balance,” Maria told the Mirror.

“Amy was fighting for life in an incubator and Katie was struggling to survive in my womb. It was the hardest three months of our lives. But Chris kept saying, ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’”

“I call the girls our little miracles,” she said. “As I held Amy for the first time I stroked my bump and prayed to God. I just wanted my girls to be together and safe and well.